“…wonder what he’s thinking about. Who he’s threatening, rather. Hey, Lance.”
Lance startles a little, turning to face his thoughtful-looking best friends. “Hm?”
“What’s up with him?”
“With who?”
Hunk inclines his head to their very own black paladin, who is standing tall with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, face twisted up in a scowl and glaring heavily at the people in front of him. All their new allies give him a wide berth, some looking at him nervously before skittering away and whispering to their dance partners and friends.
“Why does he look like he wants to kill someone? Or, well, more than usual,” Pidge says bluntly. “Are you two fighting or something?”
Lance hums, rocking back on his heels. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Is it just socialization stress?” Hunk ponders.
Pidge shrugs. “Maybe? Who knows. Maybe someone said something dumb and now he’s imagining all the places he can stick his knife.”
Lance snorts. It’s beyond possible.
“I’ll go find out,” he says, handing his plate of fancy shmancy gala goodies to Pidge, who immediately starts eating them even though hey, those are Lance’s, she has her own.
“You do that, Loverboy.”
Rolling his eyes and aiming a flick to her ear (that she dodges), Lance does, strolling up to his boyfriend and tapping him on the shoulder when he fails to react to Lance’s presence. He tenses for a moment, but calms when he realises who touched him. The scowl instantly melts off his face, furrowed brow shifting into something soft and sweet, grin crooked and showing the barest peek of crooked incisors.
“Lance,” he says, and there’s so much fondness in his voice that Lance can’t help reaching over to wrap his arm around Keith’s waist and rest his chin on his chest, tilting his face up to meet bright indigo eyes.
“Hi, baby.”
Keith brushes the hair out of Lance’s face, tucking the barely-long-enough strands beyond his ear and keeping his gloved hand cupped around his cheek. “Hey, yourself.”
Lance tilts his head to the side just enough to press a kiss to Keith’s palm, then looks back up at Keith. He’s well aware that they’re being gross and mushy in public. He doesn’t care. The gagging noises he can vaguely hear from his dumbass best friends behind him only incentivizes him to be mushier, actually.
“Whatcha thinkin’ about?”
Keith brightens immediately, small smile widening into a grin and free hand waving about in the air as he speaks.
“Okay, well, everyone on this planet is taller than us, right? And I was thinking about being tall, and how that leads to bigger skeletons, but not really more joints because then everyone would be bendy. But then I was thinking about how your spine is sort of the tallest bone in our bodies but it’s also the part with the most joints, right, and then I was thinking about joints and I started to think about the skeleton song and how inaccurate it was, so I was trying to sing it in my head but accurately and I forgot how many C vertebrae we have exactly —”
Lance has to bite his tongue as hard as he physically can to keep from bursting out laughing. He doesn’t want Keith to think he’s making fun of him, or else he’ll get all pouty and the excited glimmer in his eyes will go away, and that’s the last thing Lance wants.
But.
But.
The idea of Keith glaring at the air so hard that it’s making an entire gathered planet of people nervous, the fact that Keith has his own isolated little corner in the ballroom because his expression is so frightening that everyone else is too scared to be anywhere near him, the fact that Hunk and Pidge have spent the last who-knows-how-long contemplating what could have possibly made Keith so angry that he’s scowling that badly…and the whole time he’s singing a silly little kid’s song to himself and thinking about skeletons?
It’s funny.
“I love you,” Lance says as soon as Keith pauses to take a breath. He can’t quite keep the amusement out of his tone, which makes Keith narrow his eyes suspiciously.
“I love you, too,” he says slowly. Lance can hear the question in his voice, and chuckles quietly to himself, getting up on his tiptoes right press a lingering kiss to his boyfriend’s mouth. Keith relaxes instantly, his free hand coming to match his other and cradling Lance’s face carefully, tilting his head to improve the angle. Lance tries to sink into the kiss like he usually does, but he keeps picturing Keith’s glaring face, internal monologue singing a song about skeletons, and can’t help his giggles.
“What’s so funny?” Keith mumbles, petulant.
Lance pecks his lips one more time before pulling away. He’s still grinning.
“You’re just cute, is all.”
“I am not. I am cool and menacing.”
“Okay, baby. Whatever you say.”
